I helped build out, then worked at a cannabis extraction facility... I worked with MANY growers from mendo, and had to work out the tax implications from plant

I helped build out, then worked at a cannabis extraction facility... I worked with MANY growers from mendo, and had to work out the tax implications from plant to extraction - which gets really weird when a Co-OP of growers each brought in their harvest, to combine together so they could exrtract from their total combined batch - but each grower needed to know what their tax burdon was on the final product. That was a nightmare to figure out (at the time, we basically came out with ~$1.75 in taxes per gram of 99% pure oil) My friend, and immediate next door neighbor is the District Attorney (DA) to the DCC (department of cannibis control) we have talked about this a lot - and he knows what a shit-show the california tax code is on weed... So much so that many small growers had to sell, and some larger growers/extractors are also selling because they lost all margins. Dont even get me started on METRC but at the end of the day - this all boils down to big agra and big capital squeezing out all the small players through political lobbying and corrupt politicians, and large industry such as Constellation Brands (alcohol) making huge strides into the cannabis market. Constellation was coming in and trying to low ball small ops to sell their ops and licenses, and then paying off/lobbying politicians to make the process of getting your cultivation, distribution, etc licenses extremely hard for a typicla tradition weed farmer who has been growing for decades but now he has to follow big agra style red-tape he is not used to. Then, on top of that - when co-op growers would combine material for extraction, or pre-rolls - they still had to be tested AFTER the extraction and if the oil came back 'dirty' (had pesticides in it) the batch was useless and had to be sold on the BM (black market) at a much reduced price and these guys would lose all of their annual revenue in that one extraction -- I saw a guy get so infuriated, I wouldnt be surprised if he killed himself when he got home. It was a wild ride.